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Stunned by the unexpected exuberance in her welcome, Clayton had to swallow back emotion at the feel of the little arms wound tightly around his neck. “Course, I did, shortcake.” He gave her an awkward hug, then shifted her to his hip. “I was invited, wasn’t I?”
Brittany put a hand at the side of her mouth and leaned to whisper in his ear, “Yeah, but Nonnie said you wouldn’t come.”
Clayton turned to frown at the doorway just as his mother-in-law entered the solarium. “She did, did she?” he muttered, his frown deepening.
“Yeah. She said you didn’t have the graces to eat with us, but I told her you did.”
Clayton cocked his head to peer at his daughter in confusion. “Graces?” he repeated, frowning. Then slowly he realized what his mother-in-law must have said. “You mean social graces, don’t you, shortcake?” he asked wryly.
“Yeah,” she said, bobbing her head. “Social graces. Nonnie said you didn’t have any, but you do, don’t you, Daddy?”
Though he was tempted to leave right then and there, Clayton knew he wouldn’t. Not and let his in-laws think they could run him off that easily. “Do you know what social graces are?” he asked her.
She pushed her lips out into a pout. “No. I asked Mommy, but she just kept yellin’ at Nonnie and wouldn’t answer me.”
Clayton’s eyebrows shot up. “Your mother was yelling at Nonnie?”
Brittany nodded her head again, making her pigtails bob. “Uh-huh.” Scrunching her nose up impishly, she placed a hand at the side of her mouth again and leaned close. “And Mommy said a no-no word, too,” she whispered, then clapped her fingers over her mouth to smother a giggle.
Though he would love nothing better than to ask his daughter why her mother was yelling at Nonnie, Clayton knew that wouldn’t be right. Instead, he glanced around, looking for Rena. “Where is your mother?” he asked.
Brittany lifted a hand, pointing. “Over there.”
At that moment Clayton saw his wife, stepping around a tall potted palm, smiling at something a man following her was saying. She froze when her gaze met Clayton’s, and he would swear it was guilt he saw in her eyes before she looked away.
The jealous rage that swelled inside him was wild and dark, and tore through him like a wild bronc trying to bust his way out of a chute.
“Daddy,” Brittany complained, wriggling in his arms. “You’re hurtin’ me.”
Clayton immediately loosened his grip, unaware that, in his rage, he’d tightened his arms around her. “Sorry, shortcake,” he murmured, unable to take his eyes off his wife. “Who’s the man with Mommy?” he asked with a jerk of his chin in the direction of the two.
Brittany twisted around in his arms and looked. “Uncle Bill. He’s nice,” she said, turning to smile at Clayton. “He works at Pawpaw’s bank.”
A man from Pawpaw’s bank, huh? So that’s the plan, Clayton thought bitterly, as the pieces of the puzzle slowly clicked into place. Seemed Rena’s parents were already busy picking out his replacement.
“Did I hear correctly?” Bill asked, smiling—or was that leering?—at Clayton over a glass of Bordeaux from the opposite side of the table. “You rope calves for a living?”
Clayton ground his teeth, but managed a civil tone when he replied, “Yeah, you heard correctly.”
“And you get paid to do this?”
“When I win. But rodeoing isn’t my sole source of income.”
“Really?” Bill braced his elbows on the table and lazily swirled his wine around the bowl of the crystal goblet he held between hands that looked as pampered as any lady’s. “And what other businesses are you involved in?”
“I endorse a line of Western wear and a line of roping supplies, plus we run around two hundred head of cattle on our ranch.” He turned to Rena and forced a tight smile. “Don’t we, dear?” he asked, emphasizing the “we” so that Bill would get the message that his wife was still very much married and off-limits.
“Yes,” she said, and offered him a brittle smile in return. “We certainly do.”
“Run cattle,” Bill repeated thoughtfully as he sipped at his wine. “And what exactly does a man do when he ‘runs’ cattle?”
Clayton tried hard not to laugh. The man was more of a greenhorn than he’d first thought. “He raises them,” he replied dryly. “We have a cow-calf operation, which means we keep a herd of mama cows on the ranch, and several bulls to service them. Come fall, we’ll castrate most of the bull calves that were born last spring, then—”
He heard a silver fork clatter against bone china and glanced over to find Mrs. Palmer staring at him, her face mottled with indignation.
“Really, Clayton,” she chided. “I hardly think this is appropriate dinner conversation.”
Clayton gestured with his fork across the table at Bill. “He asked.”
Her frown of disapproval deepened before she turned it into an adoring smile as she shifted her gaze to Bill. “I’m sure Bill was just being polite by inquiring about your business interests. Bill’s quite a successful man himself, you know. Not only has he done a fine job heading up the trust department at Martin’s bank, he has also amassed a sizable fortune for himself with his own investments.”
Bill lifted his glass in a silent toast to Rena’s father. “I had an excellent teacher.”
“And he’s built an elegant home on Grand Lake,” Gloria added, “with the most stunning views. And he designed it himself. He’s quite talented, you know. You must see it, Rena,” she said, turning to her daughter. “Perhaps you can persuade Bill to give you a personal tour.”
Abruptly, Rena shoved back her chair, her arm striking Clayton’s as she rose. He glanced up and was surprised to see that her face was flushed with anger.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said tersely, then spun and all but ran from the room.
Rena stood before the vanity in her bathroom, her fingers curled tightly around the cold marble, forcing herself to take long, deep, calming breaths. It didn’t help. Rage, white-hot and blinding, continued to burn through her.
She felt as if she were caught in a game of human tug-of-war. Her parents on one side; Clayton on the other. Her trapped in the middle, being pulled first one way, then the other, until she was sure she would snap in two at the pressure being placed on her.
She whirled away from the vanity, scraping her bangs from her forehead and holding them against the top of her head. Coming to her parents, when she’d left Clayton, had been a mistake. She could see that now. But she’d wanted so badly for the twins to spend time with their grandparents, to get to know them better, and she’d thought that this would be the perfect opportunity.
With a moan of frustration, she dropped her arms, fisting her hands at her sides. But she should have known that once her parents knew of her plans to divorce Clayton, they would try to take control of her life again. The signs had all been there for her to see. Her father’s offer to handle the legal proceedings of the divorce for her, the expensive gifts her parents plied the children with, the day at the spa arranged by her mother…
But her parents inviting Bill home for dinner had been the last straw. All but parading Bill beneath her nose, expounding on his accomplishments. Pushing. Pushing. Pushing. And in front of Clayton, no less.
She wouldn’t fall into the trap they were placing carefully around her, she told herself. She had lived the first twenty-one years of her life under their manipulative thumbs, being the dutiful daughter, following the path they had carefully and strategically laid out for her.
But she wouldn’t do so again.
Three more days, she reminded herself, inhaling deeply, searching for the strength she knew she would need to stand firm against them. Three more days, then she was leaving her parents’ home and heading back to Texas and the new life she’d planned for herself there.
Three
With dawn less than an hour away and his in-laws’ estate still draped in darkness, Clayton stole across the rear lawn, keeping to the shadows and avoiding the bright patches of moonlight scattered about. Grateful that his in-laws didn’t have any dogs to alert them of his approach, he reached the portico that arched between the Palmers’ four-car garage and their home, and paused to study the stone column support nearest him, wondering if he could pull this off.
Knowing that a desperate situation required desperate measures, he toed off his boots and tossed his hat on top of them. With a resigned sigh, he planted a foot against an uneven stone and hauled himself up. He stretched one arm up high, found a grip along the edge of the roof, then reached up with the other and, straining, hauled himself up. With the slate tiles digging into his stomach, he hitched himself higher and lifted a knee to brace against the roof’s edge. Breathing heavily, he heaved himself up, then stood, dusting off his clothes as he looked around.
He studied the dark house a moment, slowly counting the windows on the second floor, until he found Rena’s. Praying that his wife had left the window open an inch or two as was her habit at the ranch, he crossed to where the portico’s roof joined with that of the main structure and half walked, half crawled his way up the slight incline.
When he found the window open as he’d hoped, he dug his pocketknife from his pocket, slipped the blade between the screen and the window frame and twisted until he’d worked the screen from the brackets that held it in place. After setting the screen aside, he eased the window up higher, swung a leg over the sill and ducked inside the bedroom.
He stood a moment, letting his eyes adapt to the change in light, before tiptoeing to the side of the bed. His heart squeezed a bit as he gazed down at his sleeping wife. Bathed in moonlight that spilled through the open window behind him, she lay on her side, one hand tucked between her cheek and her pillow.
With his gaze on her sleeping profile, he lifted a foot and dragged off first one sock, then the other. Tossing them aside, he unbuckled his belt, and quickly stripped off his jeans. As he eased closer to the side of the bed, he caught his shirt’s lowest button, releasing each disk in turn, until his shirt hung open. Shrugging it off, he dropped it to the pile of clothes already littering the floor, then lifted the corner of the sheet and slipped beneath the covers.
Stretching out beside his wife, he propped himself up on an elbow, content, for the moment, just to watch her sleep. When the urge to touch her became too strong, he lifted a hand and stroked the tips of his fingers beneath her eyelashes, then down along her jaw.
At his fingers’ soft trailing, she snuggled deeper into her pillow, her lips parting on a thready sigh. The pleasure-filled sound hummed through Clayton, calling to something deep in his soul, and, unable to resist any longer, he lowered his face over hers. With a tenderness intended to seduce, he swept his tongue across her lower lip, then pressed his mouth lightly against the moisture he’d left there, warming her lips with his breath, before he began to slowly sip at the sweetness beyond.
He felt another sigh vibrate against his lips, and grew still when she shifted and drew her hand languidly from beneath her cheek to loop it loosely around his neck.
From experience, Clayton knew that her response to him was unconscious, instinctive. He knew, too, that what he was doing probably wasn’t ethical, maybe not even legal…but for sure not fair. But at this point he wasn’t concerned about playing by any set of rules, established or not. He needed to somehow break through Rena’s resistance, reestablish their relationship, remind her of what they’d once shared.
And the bedroom was the one place they’d never had a problem communicating.
The idea to seduce his wife had come to him while he’d been lying in his bed at the motel, alone, miserable. Scared spitless that he was going to lose his wife and family, and frustrated because he hadn’t been able to get Rena alone long enough to talk to her while at his in-laws’ for dinner, he had come up with this plan.
He didn’t doubt for a minute that he could pull off the seduction. A hundred or more times over the years, after arriving home in the middle of the night from a rodeo, he’d slipped into bed with Rena, without ever once waking her. At least not immediately. But eventually he would get around to drawing her from sleep with a slow seduction, much like the one he had planned for tonight.
Hoping that by catching her off guard, her mind dulled with sleep, she would respond naturally, even welcome him into her arms as she had so many times in the past, he let his hand slide down the smooth column of her throat. Feeling the thrum of her pulse beneath his palm, he marveled at it a moment, before he dropped his hand to a breast. He stroked a thumb over her nipple, bringing it to life beneath her nightgown’s thin fabric, then smoothed his palm farther down her front and to her knees, where the hem of her nightgown was bunched. Pleased to at last meet bare skin, he closed his fingers around a shapely calf and squeezed.
She mewled at the gentle pressure, and he froze, holding his breath, as she shifted closer to him and molded her body against his. With her eyes still closed, her mind still obviously clouded with sleep, she lifted her head in a blind search for his mouth. Finding it, she purred her pleasure as she curled her fingers around his neck and drew him down with her. His body responded immediately to her lips’ teasing, his already stiffening sex pushing against the gentle curve of her pelvis.
“Rena?” he whispered.
She hummed a sleepy response against his lips, then opened her mouth to mate her tongue with his in a slow, sensual dance.
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